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Comment by kevando | Hacker News Reader

"All we need now is for Google to wake up and actually innovate with Plus, and we’ll truly have a party!"

That's a pretty great observation. Google+ isn't BAD, it's just the same as everything else.

I would argue that the Circles system was fairly innovative when it launched, but needed polishing and a better UI so as to be less confusing for users.

Circles was neat, but it solved the wrong problem. I gave a talk about it a few years ago: http://youtu.be/e3Zs74IH0mc

Watching now and I agree. I think it was a step in the right direction, but would have worked better if combined with a multiple-identity system.

I agree. Are there any examples of multiple-identity system or "share as"?

The closest thing I can think of is an email client's "send as". Apart from that I've seen some phone apps and browser extensions that focus on helping you manage multiple accounts on a given service, like Reddit or Twitter.

Thank you very much for your input. Looks like a lot of people have this kind of needs. Usually I have to create multiple email accounts to have multiple roles of me. I'll do some research on SnapChat, but why do it like it? That's for kids.

I'm beginning to like how Snapchat handles the idea of segmented contacts.

G+ Circles was basically just a slicker implementation of LiveJournal friends groups, which have been around since before FaceBook.

LiveJournal really doesn't get the credit it deserves for doing so much of what we'd now call 'social media' - and learning how to do it reasonably well - before the bigger players moved in.

I suspect that it was bought by a non-US company plays a large part in the lack of recognition - outside of 'Soviet Russia' jokes, it doesn't really fit the dominant narrative to have an innovative company not be American.

(Even if all the innovation was actually driven by the American user base and development teams.)

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